What should ancient people do if they are nearsighted?

Dear friends in front of mobile phones, are you also a glasses family? Myopia is very common today. However, in ancient times, myopia was a "disease of wealth". In the age without glasses, how did our ancestors fight myopia? Why is myopia only the patent of the rich?

Li Bai wrote in his poem: such a bright line is at the foot of my bed, and I suspect there is frost on the ground. There is a hazy sense of myopia. Of course, this poem is just a rhetorical device. However, Ouyang Xiu, one of the eight masters in Tang and Song Dynasties, was indeed a well-documented myopia. Ye Mengde, a native of the Southern Song Dynasty, once recorded that Ouyang Xiu was very difficult to study after he was nearsighted, and he could only listen to very young scholars, sometimes even affecting his office.

Myopia was a "disease of wealth" in ancient times because there were few scholars and the illiteracy rate was high. Usually, natural light is used more, and few people stay up late to study. Even when writing brush strokes, we pay great attention to sitting posture, keep a healthy distance and avoid hurting our eyes. Except for a big family with thousands of books, most people have little or no myopia.

In the Yuan Dynasty, glasses were introduced to China from the western regions, but at that time, glasses were all made of high-grade crystals, and they were all imported, with high prices. Except for princes and nobles, ordinary people can hardly afford it and become a veritable "luxury". So when did glasses go to the public?

From Yongle period of Ming Dynasty to Wanli period, we can see an old intellectual with glasses in Qiu Ying's "Southern Complex". It is well documented that myopia with glasses first appeared in painting. Judging from the age of the painting, the old gentleman must be a big family, because the market price of a pair of glasses was roughly equivalent to a horse.

In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, a wise man named Sun, after years of accumulation and exploration, finally creatively mastered the technology of grinding lenses with crystal materials. During the Shunzhi period, you could buy a pair of glasses for less than ten pence.

Besides being popular among the people, glasses are also highly sought after in the palace. Up to the emperor, such as Kangxi Yongzheng; Down to civil servants, such as Ji Xiaolan, they are short-sighted and wear glasses. Among them, Yongzheng's pursuit of glasses has gone beyond the practical scope. For him, glasses are more like a fashion. Puyi, the last emperor, is said to be a 450-year-old nearsighted patient. He is not only the last emperor, but also the "last glasses emperor".